One More Wicked Hot Day In; Gordon Unleashes Floods, Florence Confounds

Heat indexes in the Champlain Valley later this afternoon could
get over 100 degrees. In September1

I'm still in Yankton, South Dakota missing, or more accurately, not missing the latest big hot spell in Vermont.

Once again, it's one of those never ending summers, although the break in the heat that's coming is HUGE. You're going to be shocked.

First, the North Country has to get through today. You know the drill. There's heat advisories in the valleys, as heat indexes will get into the 95 to 100 degree range.

The record high in Burlington today is 90 degrees set in 1973. That should be broken today.

Last week I said I doubted it would get into the 90s again, but, well here we are. I'm thinking this will be the last 90 degree day of 2018, but there's no guarantees of that.

The glorious cold front from Canada will come through Thursday morning. After today and tonight, we're into autumn. Or at least a less horrible version of summer.

The humidity will keep you awake tonight, and some rumbles of thunder might also do the same. When you wake up in the morning, it will be oppressively humid. When you get home from work in the evening, well, welcome to autumn.

And autumnal it will be this weekend. High temperatures will only get into the 60s, with some upper 50s in the cool spots. Everybody except those right along the shores of Lake Champlain will be down in the 40s Saturday night.

The cold hollows will get into the 30s Saturday night, and I have to wonder if the first frost advisory of the fall season will be issued for those regions.  Don't worry, most of us won't lose our remaining gardens to the frost.

Warmer, more summerlike weather will be back next week, but don't worry. It won't be in the 90s.

TROPICAL STORM GORDON

The future potential track of Gordon will hit Arkansas and
surrounding areas with heavy rain. The remains of Gordon
might give us Vermonters a little rain early next week.

Tropical Storm Gordon made landfall as expected on the northern Gulf Coast last night. It didn't quite make it to hurricane status, but it's still a big troublemaker.

One person has died after a tree fell on a mobile home and killed a child. Which is tragic enough. Gordon hasn't done its worse yet.

True, the winds have died down to safe levels. But the storm will continue to dump heavy rain from Alabama to Arkansas over the next few days, and serious flooding is a virtual certainty.

The Midwest is still soggy from days and days of rain, and the flooding from Gordon will likely extend into Missouri and Illinois

The remnants of Gordon will probably be entrained into a weather front coming into New England Monday. That means we here in dry Vermont still have a shot of getting some needed rain. At this point, the Gordon remnants do NOT look like any kind of blockbuster for Vermont, but any rain would help.

HURRICANE FLORENCE

As you can see by this map of different computer model
predictions for Hurricane Florence, nobody knows
where it's going, so don't even think about it just yet. 

Hurricane Florence is still way out over the central Atlantic, but it's confounding forecasters with its strength and unpredictable path.

Florence, defying all forecasts, has become the first major hurricane of the season in the Atlantic, witih top sustained winds as of late this morning of 125 mph.

Projections had indicated it would stay a tropical storm or at most barely a hurricane, then weaken some due to strong upper level winds.

The National Hurricane Center is guessing that Florence is in a pocket of light upper level winds in an area where those winds are generally stronger. For now, the NHC has pretty much given up on forecasting the storm's intensity over the next few days. It's hard to say if those upper level winds will weaken the storm again, or cause it to grow.

The eventual path of Florence is an even bigger wildcard.  When hurricanes get as far north as Florence is now, they almost always recurve to the north and miss the United States.

But not always.

This could be one of those "but not always" scenarios. Strong high pressure to the north could steer the storm toward the United States. Some computer models emphasized that westward turn this morning.

Don't count on it, though. As noted, the computer forecasting models are really struggling with how to figure out Florence. Some projections keep it going west. Some turn it north and away from the East Coast. Some of the computer models are so flummuxed that they're coming up with bizarre scenarios.

One model actually had Florence eventually becoming an enormous storm over Maine or Quebec, tapping into polar air and causing a very gusty, nasty snowstorm over Vermont and other areas of northern New England on September 19.

I don't know what Florence will do, but I guarantee she WON'T do that. Don't bother getting your snow shovels out yet.

Bottom line: For now, people should just keep Florence in the back of their minds, and if it comes close to the East Coast next week, then start paying attention.

Gordon Update, And More Vermont Heat And....Autumn??

Tropical Storm Gordon in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday.

Tropical Storm Gordon continues to spin in the Gulf of Mexico today, still on a potentially destructive course that will take it ashore on the central Gulf Coast of the United States late tonight or very early Wednesday.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that fears Gordon would become much stronger than forecast are fading.

There are some upper level winds that are making conditions not perfect for the storm to grow exponentially before landfall.

The bad news that atmospheric conditions, and the warm water Tropical Storm Gordon is passing over still makes it likely the storm will be at or near hurricane strength at landfall. You really can't win with these things.

Top sustained winds with Gordon this morning were at 65 mph, so you can see it's not that far from hurricane strength, which is 75 mph.

Storm surges of up to three to five feet are still forecast. While the storm's high winds won't cause complete destruction, gusts over 75 mph can still do some real structural damage. The highest risk from Gordon continues to be serious inland flooding due to torrential rains.

Although Gordon will rapidly fall apart once it reaches land, the risk of flooding will continue all week. The remnants of former hurricanes and tropical storms can cause flooding days or even more than a week after they lose their tropical characteristics.

In this case, the remnants of Gordon seem like they will be somewhere over or near Missouri by around Sunday.

This is bad, because as I've mentioned, it's been raining hard in parts of the Midwest for days. Flooding is becoming widespread. Torrential rain is falling in this area again today due to a weather system unrelated to Gordon.

Gordon seems like it wants to spread another surge of heavy rain onto soggy places like Iowa, Missouri and eastern Nebraska. Ugh.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Florence in the central Atlantic Ocean has been upgraded to a hurricane, at least for now. It will probably temporarily weaken, then strengthen again. It's too soon to say whether it will affect the United States East Coast.

MORE VERMONT WEIRDNESS

A perfect anvil cloud from a strong to severe thunderstorm, looking
south from the Burlington area on Lake Champlain. The storm was
probably near Middlebury at the time. 

On Monday, Burlington, Vermont reached a record high of 93 degrees, beating the previous record of 92 degrees set in 2010. Once again, we have an over-performing hot spell. (Forecast highs Monday  were "only" in the upper 80s.)

Plattsburgh, New York made it to a record 94 degrees, besting the previous record of 90 degrees in 1953.

It's a little cooler in Vermont and the rest of the North Country today, but it's still quite summer-like. Highs today will be around 80 degrees, which is still warmer than normal, but not totally weird.

A weak cold front is responsible for today's so-called cool down. The front was able to set off some thunderstorms and some of them were pretty rambunctious. Most people that got the storms - mostly in northern and central Vermont - appreciated them because we need the rain.

I'm in Yankton, South Dakota for the week but I was anxiously watching radar hoping some storms would bulleye my St. Albans house. It looks like a couple brief downpours passed over my property, so that's a plus.

Some storms were damaging. Possibly the worst went through the Coventry area in the Northeast Kingdom, where numerous trees fell down on Interstate 89 and Route 5. In Irasburg, numerous trees toppled and a baseball field dugout was lifted off its foundation and folded in half.

Since all the trees seemed to fall in the same direction, it sounds like a microburst and not a tornado to me.

Shelf cloud near Lyndonville, Vermont Monday. Via Twitter from
@vanessa_wxgirl

There were isolated spots of very heavy rain. Gilman reported 2.35 inches of rain and Lyndonville had 1.67 inches from a dramatic storm filmed by meteorology students on the Northern Vermont University campus.

Another blast of heat is coming back at Vermont tomorrow, and more record highs are very likely. Temperatures could get into the mid-90s in the Champlain Valley. Heat advisories will probably be issued.

But that's it for awhile.

A strong cold front is still destined to come through Thursday. There won't be any severe storms with it, except maybe in southern sections. But it will totally feel like autumn over the weekend.

High temperatures over the weekend in most of the northern half of Vermont and the rest of the North Country won't get out of the 60s, and overnight lows will be in the 40s. A few colder mountain hollows could get into the 30s.

In Burlington, the last time the high temperature failed to reach 70 degrees was on June 24.

It even feels possible we'll have a rainfall next Monday that will seem more fall-like than something we see in the summer. During summer, rain usually falls in the form of hit and miss showers and thunderstorms.

During the fall, winter and early spring, precipitation is usually steadier and more widespread. A storm system, consisting partly of what will be the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon, could spread a shield of light to moderate rain.

All this doesn't mean warm weather is over. There are signs it could turn pretty warm and summer- like later next week. I doubt that will involve 90-degree heat waves, but I wouldn't drag out the ski parkas and snow boots just yet.